


The Desert

by k_n



Series: The Camp [2]
Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, xxxHoLic
Genre: American Politics, Drugs, Espionage, F/F, F/M, Imprisonment, M/M, Mental Health Issues, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-17 09:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5863312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/k_n/pseuds/k_n
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On televisions in American homes, four faces appear as wanted criminals - Kurogane Suwa, Yuui Fluorite, and the Daidouji sisters.<br/>(Part 2 of The Camp.)</p><p>*ON HIATUS*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Copyright © 2016 by k_n
> 
> This will be very confusing if you have not read The Camp, so please read it to figure out what is happening in Part II. Thank you so much for looking at my work and please tell me what you think! I love hearing people's responses. This is the second part of the series. I have a general sense of the direction of it, but a good deal of it isn't completely set in stone...
> 
> What are we going to see in this one?  
> *The letters  
> *Yuui and Fai  
> *CHII (let's be real...I just love writing Chii)  
> *MORE OC'S! (Shanisa, Carla, and Oz!)  
> *Doumeki  
> *Sakura and Syaoran!
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy!

            The children are crowded close. The projector isn’t working right and Syaoran, being taller, has to fuss with it for ten minutes. Sakura distracts them all the while, trying to engage them. She keeps an eye on the clock on the wall. It’s two minutes slow. She keeps this in mind. Two minutes slow. Syaoran gets the projector to behave and Sakura claps. The children clap too, automatically, even if they aren’t sure what the applause is about. Their parents are tired, murmuring tiredly near the back of the room.

            Sakura wishes more had come. There is only so much she can do, only so much she can say to convince them to crowd in the recreational center for a movie night. If she cried about this an hour ago, no one can tell, but she did; she stood in the bathroom, glaring at her reflection, red-eyed. The lights flickered above her. She thought, _of course the lights don’t work—nothing does._

            Now, no one can tell, though. A parent turns off the lights. A cartoon will keep everyone occupied for an hour and a half, if they’re lucky. The kids distract easily. She knows this. Sakura frets that none of the teenagers invited actually showed, preferring to loiter in the soccer field, kicking a ball about. She wishes she could have told them. She really does.

            The lights dim. Sakura looks at the clock—two minutes slow, two minutes off. She swallows a lump in her throat. Syaoran looks at her curiously while she leans against a bare wall, joining her side. He knows something is wrong, but not what. He thinks he has done something, but he always thinks that. Sakura looks at her husband, smiling quickly.

            “The projector,” Syaoran starts, and she takes his hand, shaking her head. “Have I done something?”

            “No,” Sakura says.

            “Can I do something?” he asks.

            She squeezes his hand.

            “Stay a while,” she decides. “That would be good.”

            “Sakura…”

            “I cannot tell you,” she whispers. “Not now. Later, you’ll know. But the kids will be bothered. Let’s keep quiet.”

            He kisses her cheek, and she turns her head so that he catches her lips, instead. He smiles, looking dazzled yet troubled, but it does what she wants. He asks nothing else, not until—

            (Two minutes slow.)

            The first explosion comes while the kids are giggling at potty humor, and Syaoran is the first to run. Sakura thinks it’s louder than she expected—of course it is, she’s never heard a bomb in her life—and rushes towards the door to stop her husband and turn on the lights. Some of the kids have burst into surprised sobs, sensing something is wrong, and the parents instinctively rush to their respective children. Sakura tells everyone to stay calm. Syaoran is looking at her like he’s never seen his wife before, and Sakura knows it. Sakura tells them all to sit “like we practiced”—crouching in the fetal position, arms protecting the head—and is glad when the kids do what she says. Her position as their teacher gives her an authority she has never had in her life, before.

            The parents are starting to do the same. Syaoran grabs Sakura by the sleeve, a question in his eyes—no, an accusation: _you knew._ He’s blurry in her vision. Tears get in the way, like they tend to do. She swears she can hear the desert speaking to her, mourning that this isn’t the only bomb to go off. Syaoran’s eyes widen, suddenly, and he barely manages to say it.

            “Mr. Suwa,” he realizes.

            “I’m sorry, Syaoran,” Sakura whispers just as the second bomb goes off, the one that blows off the wall and weakens a spotlight just enough that it crashes straight through the roof. The desert is screaming outside, grieving, and Sakura can only hear a painful tone between her ears after that, ringing and screeching and on fire. Syaoran shoves Sakura into a wall, narrowly saving them both from the heavy spotlight. She grabs onto his shoulders, and beyond him, she sees the limp and bloodied body of a girl who brought one of her lost baby teeth to class just yesterday. Just yesterday, a tooth in her palm, and Sakura told her _good job_ and Sakura knows she is screaming, but she can’t even hear herself.

            Ears ringing. The desert is screaming. The desert, terrified that more corpses should litter it. Sakura looks up through the gash of the split ceiling, looking for stars, but only finding smoke. Syaoran is yelling at her, and she thinks that she deserves every cruel word he knows, even if he certainly isn’t saying them.

            Smoke. There should be stars. Something is on fire. She sees the teeth along the ceiling getting orange-hot. A corpse of a child who brought her lost baby teeth to class. Two minutes slow. Two minutes slow.

            The clock drops off the wall.

 

            He has blood in his eyes and the driver is dead. The driver, Jeremiah West—a good kid, a little nervous, but not cynical enough to be a man yet, and he’s dead, and Oz slaps him like it might help. (It doesn’t.) He’s finding it hard to see anything. He staggers from the truck, falling out of it. He feels like something’s grabbed his bones and shook them out of whack. He can’t walk right. He falls in the sand, peering around. Can’t see right. Blood in his eyes. He wipes his forehead, hissing in pain when he accidentally presses glass deeper in the skin, there. The truck crashed. Why did it crash? He grabs onto the door handle, pulling himself up.

            He sees his reflection in the dusty car window. A huge shard of glass wedged in at the top of his head, blood crying from the sides of the gash. He considers removing it, realizing it’ll probably bleed worse, so refrains. He rubs his eyes with his forearm, smearing blood over it. Vision is slightly better. His eyes burn. He looks at his reflection a moment longer. He sees smoke behind him. His ears are ringing. He realizes something.

            “Daidouji!” he shouts (he cannot hear himself, but he knows it’s what he says), and yanks the door open once more, only to find her seat empty. Broken glass splayed all over the backseat; the door is left open on her side. He grasps the car for stability, rounding over to her side. Glass and sand and rubber and plastic and he suddenly sees something black and small, somehow, in the sand. He picks it up, knowing exactly what it is.

            “This night is just getting better,” he growls, pocketing her wire. It’s broken. It’s no use. He punches the car, like it might help. (It doesn’t.) He shakes out his fist, looking out at the camp. About nine feet of fencing is blown apart. Buildings on fire. A spotlight has fallen on the recreational center. There’s a movie night, there, and the kids are there. Oz has an awful, terrible feeling. The kids. The kids. He starts towards the center. Tomoyo is gone, but the kids—the kids.

            No one should be here. No one should grow up in a camp. Oz knows this. Oz believes this. Oz wants this place to be better than it is. Oz doesn’t know everything there is to know about the camp, but if he did, he would have run away from the fire and out into the desert, through the hole in the fence. But he doesn’t know, so he’s looking at the recreational center, high with adrenaline and terror that he might find children’s corpses.

            (In his head is a reel of children’s corpses he’s seen in deployment, the kid in Iraq who lay still beside a deflated basketball, the kid in Syria draped like satin in her hysterical mother’s arms, the kid facedown with bullets in his back in Afghanistan—)

            If he had only just looked off to the right, he would have seen the Daidouji sisters getting into a black vehicle. But he doesn’t look, so he doesn’t see them. He bolts towards the center and tries to make a call, but he can’t hear the person on the other end of it. He hollers what he knows, demanding a medevac (or two, or twelve), and hangs up.

            The sand kicks up behind his boots, and the man with glass in his head runs headfirst into fire.

           

            Shanisa gets an email from a college kid she remembers meeting at a protest—or, actually, she isn’t sure. Her vision wasn’t too good that day. She could barely keep her eyes open. But she can, now, and she looks up his name after she reads the email a few times. She finds his social media accounts and looks for a video. If she hears his voice, she might have a better idea. She finds a video of a tall, broody-looking Japanese man smiling. It’s only fifteen seconds long. He blinks at the person taking the video, furrowing his brow after a moment.

            “I thought you were taking a picture,” he says.

            “I lied!” the person—a girl—his girlfriend?—replies, laughing.

            “You’re the worst,” he decides as the girl giggles, and Shanisa plays the video a few times. The right voice. She remembers it, remembers him screaming at Siri to find out how to get pepper spray out of someone’s eyes (hers). She looks at the email once more, looking at the pictures.

            “What’s for dinner?” her son asks, bouncing in through the kitchen. Shanisa is zooming in on the pictures. She doesn’t know what this place is, but Kurogane Suwa says he is there, and Shanisa’s son pauses, expectant. “Are you playing a game, Mommy? Can I play?”

            “Game’s no good for kids,” Shanisa lies.

            “What’s for dinner?”

            “Don’t know.”

            “Chicken nuggets?”

            “No.”

            “Aw.” Her son gets on his tiptoes, and Shanisa pulls the phone up, away from his eyes. “ _Mommy_ , c’mon—I wanna play, too!”

            “Not for kids,” she repeats. “Go play with your brothers.”

            When her son, accepting his defeat, runs back outside, Shanisa takes a seat at her kitchen table. Her father is already there, smoking a cigarette with a pair of outdated headphones on, plugged into an equally outdated Walkman. He moves slightly, pulling his headphones off. Shanisa keeps staring at the phone. She doesn’t know what to do.

            “What’s wrong?” her father asks. “I can take care of it.”

            “I don’t think you can, Daddy,” she says.

            “What’s the matter?”

            Shanisa swallows a lump in her throat, taking a cigarette from her father’s carton. He whistles, brows raised. For all that he can’t see, his hearing registers everything. He hands his daughter his lighter without her needing to ask.

            Kurogane Suwa is in an internment camp in the middle of nowhere. She wondered what happened to the Suwa restaurant; it closed so suddenly, and the family seemed to disappear. Shanisa’s no idiot. She lights a cigarette and slouches in her chair. The college kid who tried so hard to help her get pepper spray out of her eyes—and she has no idea how to help him. She can tell the media, but she knows the media’s good at making truth look ridiculous. People won’t believe this, the story Kurogane’s told her, but Shanisa believes it. She takes a drag. Should she try, anyway? Should she tell them? She should. She should go back to the streets, screaming at anyone who will listen, because Kurogane Suwa’s internment (and everyone else’s) should trouble _everyone._

            “Is it that bad?” her father asks.

            She doesn’t answer.

            “Well, I’ll be!” her father chuckles. “My baby, speechless! Well, I’ll be.”

 

            (Two minutes slow.)

            Oz sees a woman wandering in a circle outside the recreational center, her cheek cut open, green eyes dim and far away. A man is shouting, tan and brown-haired, pointing children and their parents towards safety. Oz’s sprint slows to a slight jog. The green-eyed woman in a dazed circle; she’s cupping a hand to her ear, as if listening for a whisper, and Oz yells towards her, but she doesn’t respond. He meets the eyes of the shouting man, who looks overwhelmed and relieved to see him.

            “We’ll have helicopters!” Oz shouts, competing with the fire for volume. He realizes who this man is. One of the teachers. Then, the woman—Syaoran Li interrupts Oz’s train of thought.

            “The spotlight!”

            “I know! We can—”

            “We’ve got dead students!” Syaoran hollers, and if there is pain in his voice—if his voice breaks a bit, hoarse—Oz won’t say so. He turns away from Oz, turning towards the fleeing parents and their children. Young. Young kids. Not even the teenagers. Oz feels sick for a moment, but he looks away from there. There is a good line of safe, if startled, children, and that is promising. But there are dead students, too.

            “Is this all of them?” Oz shouts.

            Syaoran nods. Oz thinks that this number is too small. Were the teenagers there? He hears a sudden roar of helicopters overhead and waves his arms around, jumping, hoping they might come to his aid first.

            The recreational center is on fire. Bodies inside. Kids. The helicopters are making their landing outside the compound and there is sand flying everywhere and Oz does something reckless, hurrying into the burning center to make sure that the kids are really dead. He pulls up his shirt, tucking his nose and mouth under the collar. Blood drips down the side of his nose and it’s hard to see through it and through the smoke and—

            (Two minutes slow.)

           

            Fifty-one people die, in the end, because of a series of bomb explosions. The bombs knock out crucial security cameras that could identify the culprits, but there are some facts, in the aftermath, which give a good enough idea. There are missing people, a group of which were already behaving suspiciously. Tomoyo Daidouji and her sister, Kendappa. Kurogane Suwa. Fai Fluorite. All four are not recovered as casualties, and a Japanese prisoner says she saw a blond man dragging Kurogane Suwa through the sand towards the hole in the fence. No one sees the Daidoujis leave, but Tomoyo’s broken, abandoned wire suggests that they intentionally escaped.

            On televisions in American homes, four faces appear as wanted criminals. But the public does not know about the internment camps. The public does not know what these four faces did, only that they have committed dangerous treasons. A white little girl, mistaking _treason_ for _treasure_ , decides that the four must be pirates. She pretends she is a pirate queen, jumping from sofa to sofa as quietly as she can, playing out a pretend drama on imaginary ships. Her cat is her first mate. She does not understand what pirates do, but she does not understand what national traitors do, either.

            Shanisa sees Kurogane’s face on her screen and doesn’t know if she should be glad for him or worried for him. She knows that he’s escaped—why else would he be wanted? He has gotten out. Shanisa forwards Kurogane’s email yet again to all of the media outlets she can think of. The only one that publishes it is her local black newspaper, and the story gets lost in the back pages. Those who do read it are skeptical, as the editor titles the article: _Is Kurogane Suwa Telling the Truth?_

            She paints a sign outside her house— _Immigrants Are Not Criminals!_ —while her father sits on the stoop, telling his grandchildren exaggerated stories of his heroism in the Vietnam War, and her sons divvy their time between listening to him and asking their mother if they can paint a spaceship on her sign. (She tells them _no_ , but gives them another side of the cardboard box she deconstructed to make the sign, and they can paint their spaceship on that.)

            In the city square, she protests by herself. The people that protested with her do not yet believe her story, mistaking it for a dystopian fiction. It certainly sounds like one. Still, some of her friends come by the square to stand by her and make sure no one attacks her. She shouts as loud as she can. Her boys are at home, hatching up a plan to make a neighborhood stray cat live with them. They imagine they can secretly keep the cat in their bedroom, but it is just a cheerful fantasy.

            Still, Shanisa shouts in the city square. Some people pause, watching her with bemused smiles. Most walk straight by, avoiding eye contact. A few stop for a little while, listening to her, but leave when they hear her say _Kurogane Suwa_.

            When she gets home, she puts her boys to bed. Her father is asleep on the sofa, sitting up. She puts her sign on the kitchen table and stands in the threshold, looking at it, exhausted and brittle yet strong. She is angry. When a population, no matter how small, is yanked out of society, there must be dissenting voices. There must be fury. There must be indignation. But it is hard to fight for a problem that the public doesn’t think exists, anyway, because it does not affect them.

            Shanisa pities herself for less than a minute. That is all she allows. She makes another pot of coffee and turns on her laptop—it’ll start complaining in twenty minutes, overheating and upset about it—to check her email once more. Nothing. No media outlets have answered her. She grimaces. She takes out her phone. She sees the barbed wire pictures, the desert—a mysterious place that Kurogane Suwa must have found his way out of.

            “Siri,” she starts, “how you find out where a picture was taken?”

            The single mother of three boys, the caretaker of a blind veteran, prepares herself to take care of yet another man.

 

            A contractor has repaired the fence. Firefighters have doused out the fire. The prisoners are understandably angry, demanding answers. The Russian prisoners go by the Japanese fence, curious for answers, too, even if the explosions did not upset their own camp. Shizuka Doumeki— _Doumeki_ is his preferred title, somehow, because it is somewhat impersonal, and he is impersonal, himself—paces around the soccer field, kicking a ball by himself. He is worried, even though no one looking at his face would realize it. Many of the injured have been evacuated, brought to hospitals, and Watanuki Kimihiro is amongst them.

            Doumeki is an observer of people. He sees everything. He sees what other people do not take the time to see. He does not consider this negative, as he has a better idea of how people behave than most would. He knows Kurogane is part of why this disaster happened. He knows Fai Fluorite is, too. He knows the Daidouji sisters escaped into the desert, relatively unharmed. Doumeki even knows that the car all four of them went into was black, missing a license plate. He observes, so he knows.

            He has been suspicious of all four of them from the beginning, really. Tomoyo was too friendly with others and too keen on Kurogane Suwa’s safety than should be warranted, seeing as she never met him before. Kurogane—Doumeki decides that Kurogane is a sort of incidental character, happening to fit amongst plots that he himself hasn’t made—he is not a bad man, but dangerous. Fai? Fai is obvious and always was. Doumeki is an obsessive eater and can tell good quality cooking from bad quality cooking, even for food he hasn’t eaten; those teacakes were too crumbly, made from amateur hands. Kendappa? Kendappa…

            He always knew. She is like him, too: an observer. He’s met her eyes and seen his own eyes looking back, observing, silent—but gone. They are all gone. And their actions have put Watanuki in a hospital, removing him from Doumeki. And Doumeki has to protect the idiot. Watanuki is a gentle soul, for all he appears not to be, and he tends to attract trouble. Doumeki kicks the ball by himself, considering his situation, considering the camp. There will be no practice today. He isn’t sure when practice will start again. There are fifteen kids in the hospital, mostly from the blue-shirt team. Four kids died in the recreational center (and two parents). The teenagers who had decided to spend that night in the soccer field got away mostly safe. It is ironic and sad, considering that the movie night was certainly an effort to keep the children safe, yet it was right in the most dangerous place possible.

            There is something wrong with Sakura, now, but it would be surprising if she emerged perfectly unscathed. She’s a gentle soul, too, like Watanuki—perhaps even more. Doumeki has seen the woman walking around the camp with her ears cupped, like she’s listening for a quiet voice no one else can hear. Syaoran is not taking it well, but he is pretending to.

            A cleaning crew is clearing away the rubble. Doumeki thinks of the bodies; he wonders where they will take the bodies. When the sickness came through, no one ever figured out where the corpses went. Doumeki senses the answer to that question isn’t satisfactory. He imagines a pit in the desert, swarmed with flies, crowded with the dead. Will these new corpses join those? He doesn’t know.

            The ball soars into the bleachers. Doumeki frowns, surprised at himself for kicking so hard. He goes towards the bleachers and takes pause, hearing breathy sobs from beneath it. He doesn’t go forward, but he peers through the slots of the bleachers, seeing a head of scruffy brown hair and shaking shoulders.

            It’s Syaoran Li. Doumeki glances left and right, wondering where the man’s wife is, but he doesn’t see her. Syaoran is alone. Doumeki hears a lighter click and sees a brief flash of yellow-orange, then—

            He’s lighting something on fire. Doumeki takes quiet steps to come closer, and he sees something that looks like a shoddily-drawn dragon (Doumeki thinks he could draw a better one, but it doesn’t matter) on paper, surrounded by Hiragana. On fire. Syaoran is destroying it. Why?

            Doumeki coughs, and Syaoran jumps upright, bolting from beneath the bleachers in frenzy.

            Doumeki collects his ball.

 

            Jeremiah West’s body is sent away, and Oz recalls meeting the kid when the place was under construction, hot and dry. Jeremiah had a stupid hat on and Oz thought he looked better suited for a fishing trip than anything else. A good kid, though. He liked magic tricks and liked “finding” coins behind people’s ears. Oz thinks of that when he goes by the spot where the truck crashed. There is still some glass in the sand. Most of the blood is gone. Oz has to go to the hospital to have the gash on his head checked out; his hair has been shaved off down the middle for the stitches to get done, so he wishes, idly, that he had a hat as stupid as Jeremiah’s was to make it look less awful.

            Fifty-one dead. The majority, prisoners, but ten were guards. Jeremiah West is a number, now, and Oz thinks, feebly, if he will be one, too. He squats, rolling sand in his palm. The desert is a lonely place. So long as he keeps moving, working—he won’t think of it. This is how it was in his deployment, too. The worst of it was the boredom, the hours spent tense and alert while nothing happened. He was almost more pleased when they were attacked; at least it gave their tension an answer.

            It is different, here. Oz watches the sand fall from his palm, back into the desert. Jeremiah West and his stupid hat. The kid wasn’t even nineteen yet. He was drafted in. He didn’t want to be in the military; he wanted to be a party magician. So foolish. Jeremiah, faking astonishment when he “found” a nickel behind Oz’s ear, one time, and Oz’s deadpan reaction only making everyone cackle.

            “The desert is wounded,” says a woman, and Oz springs up, surprised to see Sakura Li approaching him, arms outstretched. Oz takes a step back, but Sakura keeps coming.

            Oz warns her, “Back up.” She keeps coming.

            “Can you hear it?” she whispers. “The desert is crying, and no one can hear it—but do you?”

            “What are you—”

            Sakura grabs his face in her hands, looking at him but not quite—no, she’s looking through him. Or that’s how it feels, at least. Oz is too startled for a moment to pry off her fingers, so he stares back at her. She stares through him, a prophet, delivering messages that don’t seem to come from her own mind. But they must. There are no prophets anymore; they died centuries and centuries ago; but Oz looks at her eyes, green and bright and vibrant and somewhere far away, even if she’s so close to him that he feels her breath on his face.

            “The desert is wounded,” Sakura rasps. “The desert is wounded because we have wounded it. The desert drinks blood and it wants more, now. It is so thirsty. So thirsty. The desert is wounded and I cannot heal it.”

            Someone else removes Sakura from him, and Oz feels like he isn’t supposed to move. Syaoran clasps his wife’s hands together beneath his, apologizing profusely in one breath and then trying to console Sakura in another.

            “I’m so sorry, it’s—Sakura, it isn’t real—you have to know it’s not real, honey—shh…”

            Over Syaoran’s shoulder, Sakura continues staring through Oz.

            “The desert is wounded,” she keeps repeating, possessed by the idea. “The desert is wounded, and I cannot heal it. It is so thirsty. It wants more. I hear it—I hear it…”

            Syaoran leads his wife away, tears in his eyes, and all Oz can do is stare after the couple. He knows what insanity looks like. He has seen his reflection during bursts of it; he knows the dead-eyed glance, intense yet brainless. He knows what it is like when his hands aren’t opaque. It feels like insanity. But Sakura does not look that way, whispering while her husband speaks over her, trying to hush her, trying to talk some sense into a woman who cannot hear him.

            Oz cups a hand over his ear, wondering if he, too, might hear the desert.

            But he can’t.

 

            Carla wakes up to an interesting sight: a cat’s anus. She blinks at the thing, but it doesn’t go away. Tomoyo’s cats are bizarre, and Carla is almost used to it, now. Before, the cats slept in Tomoyo’s bed, and Carla would wake up to Tomoyo scolding them. Now, the cats gravitate to Carla’s bed, and Carla realizes how ineffective her scolding is. The cats don’t care. Moko’s asshole is right in her face. Nana is kneading her paws on the sheets above Carla’s knee, purring, and Carla prays for a little patience.

            “Are we hungry, girls?” Carla asks.

            Moko, deaf, has no answer, but Nana closes her pretty eyes for a few moments. Carla has learned enough about cats that she slowly blinks back at Nana. Moko springs away, dashing off the bed, and Carla sits up. She reaches out her hand, and Nana nuzzles her fuzzy face against it. Carla smiles at the thing.

            “Do you miss your mom?” she asks. “Do you?”

            Predictably, Nana has no response. Carla lightly scratches the cat behind the ears, and Nana’s eyes shut in perfect bliss.

            Tomoyo has been gone for a month, now, and Carla still catches herself knocking on her roommate’s door to make sure she’s awake. The silence that answers her is a slight shock to the heart, but Carla always keeps herself together, laughing at her own foolishness. But for now, she pets one of Tomoyo’s cats, thinking about the creature’s owner.

            Carla knows Tomoyo because they dated the same woman, a Russian woman, Amelia. Amelia broke both of their hearts for a time, and their unusual friendship formed as an accidental response. Tomoyo and Carla, drunk in a bar, recognizing each other and discussing their very specific kind of heartbreak. From there, they became friends, and, eventually, moved in together.

            “I miss your mom,” Carla says. “I wonder what she’s up to, huh? Let’s have some breakfast, lady. How’s that sound?”

            She gets out of bed and heads down the stairs, listening to Nana’s gentle paws tap on the steps behind her. When Carla finds her way to the kitchen, Moko is already there, sitting on the counter and meowing at a horrible pitch.

            “Good morning, Asshole,” Carla greets her, and pets Moko’s head. Moko leaps off the counter. She always goes hot and cold. Mostly, she wants food; she can do without Carla’s affection. “What are we thinking, girls? Let’s see what Chef Carla can do today.”

            Carla opens up the fridge. Moko needs special food for her kidneys that has a strong, unpleasant smell. Nana can eat whatever she pleases, on the other hand.

            “Surprise!” Carla announces. “It’s cat food again!”

            She laughs at her own joke, spooning out the cats’ respective food into their bowls. Moko stares like a menace from the floor, blue eyes unblinking. Nana weaves between Carla’s legs, purring. Carla starts a pot of coffee after she gives Tomoyo’s cats their breakfast, turning on the television for some background noise. She sees a man with black hair on the screen; it looks like a mug shot, and the man has a nasty look on his face.

            “…Suwa,” the anchor is saying.

            “You know, I think they should take more flattering pictures of people,” Carla complains to the cats. “I doubt this guy goes around looking that pissed all the time, right?”

            The cats don’t answer. Carla leans on the counter, watching the television when another face appears on screen—a face with dark, clever eyes, a round face, a head of shiny black hair—and Carla doesn’t breathe for a moment.

            “Tomoyo Daidouji,” the anchor continues.

            Carla turns up the volume. Along the bottom of the screen, a ribbon unfurls with a number on it.

            “If you have any information on the whereabouts of these suspects, please call the number below. Do not approach them or engage them. If you see them, please call the number.”

            Carla keeps watching, her mouth going dry. Nana has finished her breakfast and settles on the windowsill, soaking in the morning sunlight. Moko leaps clumsily onto the counter when the television shows the anchor again, a serious man with his hair gelled back. Carla waits for more information, but the station segues into a bit about a traffic jam, and Carla takes out her phone. She types in a name, and the first result spells out _treason._

            “Oh, Tomoyo,” Carla whispers. “What have you done?”

            The coffee pot beeps.

 

            “Sakura, you can’t be out here without a coat,” Syaoran scolds. His wife is standing directly outside their house in her nightdress, teeth chattering. She doesn’t look at him. She’s cupping an ear again, staring out into the dark. Syaoran frowns, stepping into the sand beside her. He takes her free hand in his. “Sakura.”

            “No one hears it,” Sakura whispers. “It is thirsty…”

            “Come inside, honey,” he replies, tugging her back in. Sakura resists in her own way, digging her feet into the sand. Syaoran glances down; her feet are bare. “And you don’t have your shoes? Come on. We’ll get you nice and warm and clean. In we go.”

            “The desert,” Sakura breathes. “Can you hear it?”

            Syaoran grimaces at the back of her. He finally gets her inside, and she dashes towards a window, pulling up the blinds. She leans her ear against it, open-mouthed. So far, Syaoran has been told it’s shock, that Sakura is traumatized by the students she’s seen, dead, and that the debris that hit her head is adding to her confusion. Syaoran doesn’t know. He isn’t a doctor. Sakura looks at him.

            “Can you hear the desert?” she asks. “It’s crying. I can’t heal it.”

            “There’s nothing there,” Syaoran tells her as gently as he can, but he goes to her side, rubbing her back. It hurts. His chest hurts horribly. His wife—she has done something, has added to this, and he can’t get her out of this delusion. “It’s fine, honey. You’re freezing. Let’s get you to bed—oh, your feet—let’s wash off those, first, okay? Is that alright, Sakura?”

            “No one hears it,” Sakura mourns. “We woke it up. Others died just as badly, and the desert remembers it. It’s in pain. I need to soothe it.”

            “Come on, honey. We’ll wash your feet,” Syaoran decides, and he leads his wife off to their bathroom. He convinces her to stand in the tub and turns on the water. Sakura draws her feet away until the water is hot enough, and by that time, she becomes agreeable to the whole thing. Syaoran wipes her feet clean and dry and brings his wife back to their bed.

            He loves this woman. He has known her all his life. She loves flowers and plants and sings off-key and when she smiles, he still feels like his stomach is whirling. She is the strongest person he knows, and to see her like this—it terrifies him. She doesn’t answer him. She turns her head, sometimes, when she hears her name, but she is mostly stuck in some other place, listening to the desert and rambling about thirst. Syaoran convinces her under the covers and tucks her in as tightly as possible, thinking, while he does so, that he should deadbolt the doors and hide the keys for himself. He doesn’t want her walking around at night in the cold. She’ll get sick.

            He touches her face. The tip of her nose is chilly. She is looking towards the window, not looking at her husband.

            “I burned the drawing,” Syaoran says quietly. “The one Mr. Suwa gave you. Were they his plans? You must have known.”

            “We hurt the desert. I can’t fix it. I can’t heal it. It’s screaming,” Sakura whispers, distracted, eyes on the window. Syaoran feels her forehead. It isn’t particularly warm, even though she looks ill.

            “The desert doesn’t talk,” Syaoran tells his wife. “It isn’t real. You shouldn’t listen, honey.”

            “The desert is full of skeletons. It wants more. It is greedy. I must fix it. Can you hear it? It screams all the time.”

            “No one is screaming,” Syaoran assures her. He turns her head with his hands, but her eyes don’t meet his, still. “I burned the dragon picture. Did he give you anything else?”

            “It wants Mr. Suwa, too,” Sakura whispers, eyes widening. “It wants revenge.”

            “Please look at me, Sakura,” Syaoran begs. “It’s as if you don’t know who I am.”

            “We have wounded the desert, and no one else hears it. It will get revenge. It is awake, now. We woke it up.”

            “Sakura, please.”

            Sakura’s eyes well up, and she rolls onto her belly, tearing away from Syaoran’s hands. He touches her back, and she beats her fists on the bed. He draws his hand away, feeling strange.

            “Go away, now,” Sakura says, and her voice seems wrong. “Goodnight. Go away. Goodbye. No more.”

            “Sakura—”

            “Goodnight. Goodnight.”

            Syaoran stands up, crossing the room and leaving it, shutting the door behind him. He sags, back to the wall, and hears his wife speaking to something imaginary. He has burned the dragon picture, the one with the characters he can’t read. He has watched their pupils die. He was the one to take them out of that building, saving them from the fire, leading them to safety. When he looks to his left, he sees Sakura’s orchid looking shriveled and brown at the leaf, and he isn’t sure why it happens, but that sight is the one that sets him off. A sudden, awful sob escapes.

            Syaoran holds his face in his hands and weeps for the wife who might be at fault for their dead students and friends, for the beautiful children he will never see again, for this job opportunity that has only ended up being hellish, for—

            He realizes he is crying, more than anything, for himself. His self-pity transforms into anger that he should pity himself at all, which only makes more tears come. He sinks against the door, feeling particularly small, now, and pulls his hair with his hands.

            This should not be his life. He is supposed to change the world, to educate future generations, to make a life he can consider, in hindsight, with pride. But he is not proud of himself. He is not proud of this. He is angry that he could not save the children, that he has made the choice to protect Sakura instead of pointing the government towards her—he is angry that his wife is on the wrong side. He is angry that his wife talks nonsense about the desert and that she will not look at him.

            When he is done, he comes back into the room and crawls under the covers. Sakura stares listlessly at the window, unresponsive. He touches her shoulder and listens to her breathing.

            “I love you,” he whispers, and Sakura breathes on. His throat is tight and sore. He runs some fingers through her hair, that strawberry-blond color he has come to associate with joy and color. “I think you’re guilty for some part of this, but I love you, still. I always will. You are my most important person, no matter what happens, okay? I love you so much.”

            He wishes that love were enough to save them all.

            It isn’t.

 

            Souma finally stops the car after a few hours by a small, black house at the side of the road. She pulls into its driveway and watches all of the lights go on at once. Kendappa glances back at their passengers. They have sedated Kurogane Suwa for now, for his own sake, because his fracture is so severe. When he had briefly woken up again, he just shouted and swore and raged, so it is better that he isn’t awake. Yuui keeps a hand by the man’s nose to make sure he’s still breathing. By Yuui’s standards, this is ‘sweet’. By most people’s standards, none of this could be considered ‘sweet’.

            Tomoyo, of course, has suffered the same fate, but was genuinely _worse_ than Kurogane, having woken up to realize that her sister is a spy as well—and, to make matters worse, was perfectly aware that a bombing would blow the camp apart. And so Tomoyo, too, lies blissfully unconscious.

            “This is your doctor?” Kendappa quips.

            “We can’t go to a hospital,” Souma replies, shrugging. “This is the best I can do.”

            “She’s a drug peddler, Souma.”

            “Well,” Souma retorts, “if _your charge_ hadn’t decided to bring his own ‘plus one’, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

            “Oh? Do you think that excuses your ‘doctor’?”

            “ _Really,_ you should be complaining to _Yuui_ , because _he_ is the one who decided to bring along a date,” Souma complains. She glances in the rearview mirror. “Look at him, grinning! Say something!”

            “You should have left him,” Kendappa tells her underling, who only smiles guiltily in return. “He isn’t like us, Yuui.”

            “You Daidoujis do like to say that, yes?” Yuui marvels.

            Souma turns off the car as the front door of the house opens up, revealing a woman in a satin robe and sprawling, pin-straight black hair. Kendappa glowers at her girlfriend for good measure, displeased with this development, but decides to save her venom for later. For now, they must handle the civilian in their midst. Yuui is already lifting Kurogane as gently as possible. Kendappa rounds her way to the back door, sliding it open. She gathers her younger sister into her arms, listening to Souma greet their ‘doctor’.

            “Yuuko!” Souma laughs. “Short notice, I know—thank you for seeing us.”

            “I am always pleased to see friends,” Yuuko replies. “It seems we have an extra friend.”

            Chii, as per usual, is not helpful. She does not help Yuui with Kurogane and does not help Kendappa with Tomoyo, either, but makes her way to the woman at the door. Yuuko gives a greeting, but Chii ignores it, pushing past the woman and darting into the little house. Yuuko chuckles to herself, walking back into the house as the others make their way inside. Kendappa walks inside, surprised and disheartened that the house is full of smoke. Beyond that, it smells like very, very pungent weed. The place feels crowded, stuffed with decorations and posters and incense.

            She does not want to deposit her sister in this place. She stays near the doorway, peering into a sitting room that Chii has already settled into. Yuui drags Kurogane past Kendappa, gently setting him upon a particularly stiff-looking couch and sits on the floor, cross-legged, beside the man, holding one hand by Kurogane’s nose to check his breathing. Kendappa can hear Tomoyo breathing gently by her shoulder. It’s too smoky. This is not a doctor at all—certainly not one that Kendappa would trust her own sister’s care to. Luckily, Tomoyo doesn’t need the medical attention, this time.

            Souma shuts the door and meets Kendappa’s eyes.

            “This is the best I can do,” Souma mutters. “If your underling left him behind, the hospitals the others went to would have been his option. But we don’t have that.”

            “We take care of Suwa,” Kendappa replies, “and we _leave_.”

            “Agreed.”

            “Perhaps we can leave Chii here.”

            Souma smiles. “We can’t talk about the boss’s daughter that way.”

            “You were awfully critical of his _son_.”

            “It’s different,” Souma says. “You tell Yuui he’s stupid? He laughs. You tell Chii she is? She gets someone to take you out. There’s a difference.” Souma shudders. “You remember the _other_ one…”

            Kendappa does.

            “It’s that Ashura blood,” Kendappa reflects. “It is dangerous.”

            The women glance in the room. Chii is reapplying pink lipstick, pouting into a mirror. Yuuko is moving Kurogane’s arm about, looking at it from different angles while Yuui watches on, interested. Kendappa and Souma’s eyes meet once more, and they smile at each other. Kendappa rearranges her sister, switching most of her weight onto the opposite shoulder.

            “What is this woman going to do with him?” she wonders. She wishes she could write. The sight is interesting, clouded by smoke: Yuuko, in her little black house, in her little black robe, taking out—

            “Yuuko, is that a _bone_ saw?” Souma interrupts.

            Yuuko grins.


	2. Amputation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurogane and Tomoyo wake up to find that their world is a bit different than it was when they last found it.

            Tomoyo saves Amelia’s life six times, in total. She can count it on her fingers. She stops Amelia from going to the bank six times. The seventh time, she cannot stop her, because Amelia has left her. (It was always going to happen, and Tomoyo sensed it from the moment she stopped walking on the sidewalk, startled by a woman in a red dress and a pair of heels in her hand.) The seventh time, Tomoyo gets a strange text without explanation, and she suddenly wants to throw up. It is the last text Amelia ever sends.

            On the news, a robbery is televised. On the news, the death toll is at five. On the news, Tomoyo sees Amelia’s car in a parking lot while a perfectly neutral reporter stands on the sidewalk across the street from the bank, and Tomoyo runs to her kitchen sink, feeling like her stomach is coming apart. A violent bank robbery. Shots fired, five dead, two wounded. The robber got away.

            Tomoyo calls Amelia’s cellphone, but there is no answer. She wants to be wrong, but knows she is not wrong. It is the bank from her dreams. It is the correct time of day, the correct weather—and Tomoyo can’t even breathe when Amelia’s answering machine drones on in a heavy Russian accent, brisk and professional—

            “I am not available to take your call. Please leave your contact in your message, and I will return your call within three to five business days. Thank you.”

            The last text Amelia ever sends her, of course, is _Chii Ashura_ , and it is the text that leads Tomoyo to this entire mess—to treason, to spying, to upending her entire life. All of it is _Chii Ashura_. All if it starts from there.

            But for now, she retches into her kitchen sink, shaken and defeated and brittle for yet another life that circles down the drain, out of her hands.

 

            Kurogane comes in and out, waking to angry fever dreams. There are people around him, blond and black-haired, shouting over him when he shouts for them to go away. He doesn’t consider that they are real. In fact, he doesn’t consider much at all, mostly fixated on the garish bit of bone coming out of his forearm and the awful pain of it. Someone brings a cloth to his face and holds it there. Someone else is laughing. Someone else goes _hush_. Kurogane hushes, going back out.

            In his mind, he is in a beautiful place. A forest. A palace. He is a guard, protecting a dream seer. (Stupid.) He is storming through the palace, looking for monsters. Something is on fire. He doesn’t know what. He’s prowling alone, determined that he should find the monsters before they find the seer he protects. (Stupid). He comes upon the woman he guards, and when she smiles, she has serrated teeth. He drops his sword. (Stupid.)

            He opens his eyes again. He sees haze. His eyes sting terribly. He smells something citrus and hears a girl complain, “Can we hurry this up? I’m bored.” Kurogane wants to go back to that palace in the forest. This dream is less pleasant. A woman with a crooked smile has a saw and—

            “Do you have morphine?” a man is asking.

            “Who do you take me for?” the woman with the saw laughs. “For him, there is plenty—but there is nothing for you.”

            “Bored,” a distant woman groans.

            “Kurogane,” a man says, speaking over everyone, “now is the time to be brave, yes? I am very sorry. If we had a real doctor, this would be different—but I think your Batman could fight crime with just one hand, too, correct? I certainly think so.”

            A cloth to his face, a strong smell.

            “Breathe in, my friend,” the man commands gently. “I don’t think you will be as peaceful when you wake, so have some peace, now.”

            Kurogane tries to say _Fai, the hell is going on?_ But the words don’t happen. He’s trying to focus on these people, but he can only see shapes. A dark shadow. A golden head of hair. Brooding figures at the edge of the room, watching on. Horrible, horrible, distracting pain. This dream is no good. Kurogane tries to say many things, but it doesn’t work.

            He goes out again. He is in the palace, back in the hallways, the floors slippery with blood beneath his feet. He smells heavy, strong smoke, and he can’t see anything. He finds it hard to move and realizes, suddenly, that he is weighed down in strange gear. He pries off some of his garb, heading forward in the hallways, lighter with each step. He goes to cover his mouth and realizes he is wearing a mask. He peels it off, only to find that he is, in fact, Batman. (Stupid, stupid, stupid.) He laughs like mad.

            When he comes back—

 

            Tomoyo wakes up in an unfamiliar house to a sharp, hard pain in her face. She opens bleary eyes, finding herself inside a bathroom, propped up next to a toilet. Instinctively, she pushes away the thing that hurts her face, and when she regains enough awareness, she realizes she is pushing away her sister. Kendappa, beneath pale bathroom lights with her long hair spilling all over—tweezers in her hand, a plastic trashcan with a market bag in it. Tomoyo remembers—

            The truck crashes, she tells them to stop the car, a flash ahead of them, Oz’s arm jutting out to keep her from slamming her face into the back of the passenger’s seat—and how funny, because her parents died just like that, and it is not actually funny at all—and Kendappa pulling her out, knowing too much, knowing too much—

            Tomoyo does not know what to say to her sister. Evidently, Kendappa does not, either, because she stares quietly, tweezers still poised. Tomoyo glances behind the woman, trying to find any clues. Behind Kendappa, Tomoyo sees a fog, a haze. She smells incense and fruit. She sees an antelope’s skull hanging on a wall outside the bathroom. No, she does not know this place.

            “Tomoyo,” Kendappa murmurs. “Stay still. There is a lot of glass.”

            “This isn’t the camp.”

            “No, it is not.”

            “I don’t know this place,” Tomoyo says.

            “It belongs to a friend,” Kendappa supplies, “of Souma’s.”

            Tomoyo cannot look at her sister, suddenly. Souma, Tomoyo’s superior. That sentence is enough; Tomoyo knows what Kendappa is, now, and her instinct has told her this, before, but she hasn’t listened, hasn’t wanted to. Tomoyo swallows. “Give me the tweezers.”

            “Let me take care of you.”

            “I want the tweezers,” Tomoyo repeats. “Give me them.”

            “You just woke up—you are rattled. Let me—”

            “I don’t _want_ you here, Ken,” Tomoyo snaps.

            Her sister hands her the tweezers and gets to her feet—unscathed. Safe. There is no evidence of an explosion on Kendappa at all, almost as if she had prepared, had known it would come. (She did.) Her sister pauses in the doorway, her back turned to Tomoyo, seemingly chewing on a thought. Tomoyo grasps the toilet seat, pulling herself up, watching Kendappa’s back. Suspicious. Unscathed. She knew.

            “I could not tell you,” Kendappa says quietly. “I wanted to.”

            Tomoyo shuts the door on her and locks it.

            She moves, catching her reflection in the mirror. Glass shards, splinters, stinging pain—her cheeks are swollen. Her brain swarms with the image of a dead child, one that called her ‘mama’ accidentally. She’s looking at the mirror in the bathroom and suddenly cannot live with the woman who’s looking back at her. People die, and she can’t prevent it. She thinks she is a coward. The child. The camp collapses into a single concept—the child—she cannot let herself consider the others. The child. No, she _must_ consider the others. Sakura. Syaoran. Doumeki. Watanuki. Oz. _Kurogane._

            The person in the mirror looks like Kendappa, too, looks like dead parents and a rainy night and they should not have driven, and Tomoyo always did her best to stop them, but she couldn’t, one night, one night—

            Kids playing soccer, giggling, guileless and good—

            Kurogane taking shots from paper cups, bitter and grieving—

            Sakura catching Tomoyo’s smile from the crowd in the bleachers and returning it, bright and beautiful—

            Watanuki, fumbling with his hands because Tomoyo compliments his cooking—

            The truck crashing and a sky full of fire, and Tomoyo cannot save anyone in the world, not even herself. She can’t see her reflection properly anymore; it looks vague and strange. That cannot be her face, swollen and full of glass. That can’t be her. She should be taller, braver, better. But she isn’t. She will never be.

            In the next room, a drug peddler is sawing off a man’s arm, but she doesn’t know—she doesn’t know.

 

            Amelia dies in a bank robbery, refusing to put her hands up, and this is the first thing Tomoyo knows about the woman. A brown-haired, petite woman in a red dress outside a bar, sliding her aching feet into flip-flops, her heels held in her free hand, her clutch nestled between her arm and hip. Tomoyo sees her and knows this is a woman she has dreamed of many times; she pauses. She does not want to go to a bar, but she recognizes this woman outside it.

            Her dreams are important. Amelia is not the first person she has dreamed of without meeting (there is a man with eyes that look red in the moonlight, and there is fire around him), nor the last. Tomoyo regards people differently than the average person, as she knows what their last moments will be. It strains how she sees people. They are temporary, and she is frightened by it, determined to thwart whatever fate awaits them. She has never been successful, but she tries. For this woman, too, she will try.

            The woman settles her feet in more comfortable shoes and pauses, returning Tomoyo’s gaze with dark, pretty eyes. Tomoyo realizes she is not walking anymore, that she is staring, and laughs a nervous little laugh.

            “Sorry,” Tomoyo says. “I thought you were someone else.”

            The woman smiles, replying with a thick accent, “I thought you judged my shoes.”

            “Heels are hard. Never could wear them, myself.”

            “They are difficult,” the woman says. “I am blistered.”

            “I have band-aids, if you need them.”

            “I would very much like them, then.”

            Tomoyo fiddles through her purse, and the woman smiles, watching, and Tomoyo feels clumsy. She only meant to come out and pick up eggs—she didn’t intend to pick up anything—no, any _one­—_ else. The woman accepts two band-aids that are lighter than her skin and gently presses them into the painful skin on her heels. She has a cat’s smile. She is taller than Tomoyo, but most people are.

            “What is your name?” Tomoyo asks.

            “Amelia,” the woman replies.

            “Tomoyo Daidouji.”

            “That is a beautiful name.”

            “I can’t take credit for it,” Tomoyo says, thinking of her parents. Amelia laughs, and it is a deep, beguiling sound. Tomoyo looks at this woman, who holds high-heels by the stems of them, who has band-aids on her feet, and Tomoyo thinks of a robber with a gun and Amelia, her head high, refusing to put up her hands—but she can’t say so. But she’s seen it. She knows how this woman dies.

            She realizes Amelia is holding open the door.

            “Come along?” Amelia ventures. “I will buy you a drink.”

            “In that case,” Tomoyo decides, “of course.”

 

            Kurogane wakes up with his entire forearm missing, so—to say the least—it isn’t looking too good. He doesn’t quite understand what’s going on, at first, and doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or not. The place he’s in looks like a cluster-fuck of weird things and the air is thick with musk. The first thing he thinks is that his arm doesn’t feel right—it hurts, it hurts—and the second thing he thinks is that—

            His forearm is—

            “Kurogane, hello,” Fai says softly, rubbing his other shoulder. Kurogane peers at him, bewildered, and feels a prick in his—his only forearm left. Injection? Injection. Kurogane tries to wrestle his arm out, but Fai clenches it tighter. “For the pain, my friend. That is all. It’s for the pain.”

            “Fai?” Kurogane’s voice sounds hoarse, and his throat hurts, as if he’s been shouting for hours.

            “You have been very brave tonight. I am sorry about your arm, but we did not have much choice,” Fai replies. He smiles gently. The words are strange. Kurogane feels the needle pull out and shudders. “I am afraid our doctor is not truly a doctor.”

            “My arm? My arm?”

            “You must be frightened. I am truly sorry. I did not anticipate it would happen,” Fai confesses. “You must be thirsty.”

            “Camp?” Kurogane manages.

            “That is not our concern, currently,” Fai decides. He turns around and makes a command in Russian, which is precisely when Kurogane realizes there is a crowd in here that he does not recognize. A woman with dark skin and smooth, black hair; a woman with a blinding, deathly complexion and a snake’s smile; a girl with blond hair and a cigarette—

            Kendappa, though. He recognizes her. His eyes widen and he tries getting up, wanting to rush after her, but Fai pushes him back onto—a sofa? It looks outlandish, but it must be a sofa. Kurogane’s eyes trail back to the strange, empty space where his forearm should be. He feels tingly and faraway. The pain is dissipating. He almost feels joyful. Drugged. He squints, but the forearm doesn’t come back.

            “Your arm is in the freezer,” Fai says, suddenly, and Kurogane starts laughing. “I am glad to see you’re taking it well, yes? It must be the morphine. It makes a person agreeable. Chii?”

            “He’s your fuck-up, Yuui,” a stranger complains. “ _You_ get him water.”

            Yuui?

            “Souma?” (Kendappa’s voice. Why is she here?)

            A sigh. Footsteps. Kurogane keeps looking at his missing forearm, laughing. It’s in the freezer. His _arm_ is in _the freezer._ It’s funny. It has to be. He is losing it. Kurogane feels a gentle hand on his knee and Fai is sitting there with Kurogane’s bag of things, looking uncertain.

            “How are you feeling?” he asks.

            Kurogane just smiles.

            “Oh, my,” Fai says. “Kurogane, since you are feeling so agreeable, there is something I want to say to you.”

            “Am I missing a leg, too?”

            “No,” Fai replies, and he smiles, but it doesn’t look genuine, doesn’t look right. Fai takes a breath. “You asked me, before, if I wrote you letters as a boy. As Fai, I did not. But as Yuui—yes, I did.”

            “Penpal?”

            “Yes.”

            “Yuui?”

            “That is my name,” he replies. “Please call me that.”

            Suddenly, a glass of water appears with a straw, and Fai—Yuui?—is holding it up to Kurogane, encouraging him to drink it. Kurogane sips too much at once and it leaks out, and that is funny, too, just like his missing forearm. Everything is wonderful. Fai (Yuui?) looks handsome and that blond girl looks beautiful and everything is fantastic.

            “Kurogane, do you understand? My real name is Yuui. I wrote to you. I am Yuui. I remember the letters, too. It was great fun.”

            “I loved that kid,” Kurogane announces. “My first love.”

            A cold hand touches his forehead.

            “No, really, I loved him so much, and I never even met him,” Kurogane continues, relaxed and happy and sleepy. “He wanted to ride a tornado. That’s what he wrote to me.”

            “Oh, Kurogane,” the Russian sighs, removing his hand from Kurogane’s forehead. A woman is laughing—that woman with the snake’s smile, the woman from the nightmare with the saw. Kurogane laughs, too.

            He goes back to sleep, certain that this, too, is just another awful dream.

 

            He’s in a palace. This time, he’s finding it hard to run. Something on fire, again, something and he can’t see it. Kurogane strains, but he feels something heavy on his ankles. Like hands. It’s like hands. He looks down and realizes there are rusted chains roped around him. He turns, following the chains, and sees two corpses attached to him. He does not see their faces, but sees two heads of black hair—one cropped short, the other quite long and wavy. He looks for a way to undo the chains, but can’t find one.

            “Mr. Suwa?” a woman calls. Sakura. Kurogane heaves a foot forward, trying to follow her. Something’s on fire. He smells the smoke. Kurogane heaves another foot forward, feeling metal grit into his skin. It smarts. He grabs a wall for stability, but it shakes under his hand and frightens him. “Mr. Suwa, why are you here?”

            He can’t see, he realizes. The corridor is filling with smoke. Something hits his face and catches on his cheek. He grabs it, holding it closer. Paper. He can’t read it. It’s neither English nor Japanese. He tosses it away, struggling with another step.

            “Nee-who,” a customer in the restaurant says. He’s a middle-aged white guy with his daughter, who looks horrified at her father, who _bows_ at him. It’s not even the right language. The daughter clears her throat, speaking over her father.

            “Hi—sorry—table for two, if you have one,” she starts.

            “Nee-who?” the father wonders. “Nee- _how?_ ”

            Kurogane is seating them. Kurogane has chains on his ankles. He’s chained to two figures. He fumbles, trying to free himself from the chains, but nothing will give. The corridor is heating up and he’s sweating terribly. Kurogane is seating the father and daughter, and the daughter comes in a few hours later, hair wet from the rain, to apologize for her father’s racism. The door should’ve been locked; they closed; but the door is open and she comes in, and they look at one another, slightly startled. Her name is Cassandra, and Kurogane will date her for a time, and he will love her for a time, but it is nothing compared to the letters from a boy who dreams of tornados and cows and sweets—

            “Be natural, Mr. Suwa, for my husband,” Sakura says, and she looks at him like she knows too much—

            A Russian with blond hair and a black eye, holding Kurogane’s tooth in his hand, calling him irresponsible, smiling in the dark, and this is dangerous, and Kurogane knows it—

            Kurogane stomps back towards the corpses attached to him, the ones weighing him down, not letting him run. He yanks the hair away from a body and sees the chain and he pauses, chilled. He pulls the head up and shouts when he sees his mother’s face. He tests the other body. His father’s face. His parents’ corpses. Kurogane feels dirty, dirty, weak and dirty, and he wants to burn off his hands if it might make them clean—

            On his hands and knees, scrubbing sand from a carpet—

            Sakura wrapping up his hands in band-aids, smiling like a mother because they are both frightened and _someone_ has to be the adult, right? Sakura fixing his hands and hoping she can fix whatever it is Kurogane will do—

            “It is always good to see you, Mr. Suwa,” Sakura is saying, and Kurogane sticks his hands out as far as he can, wishing that they might come off, wishing that all the dirt in the world might go away.

            “Help me,” Kurogane begs, but no one can hear him. The place is on fire and he is going to join it, too. “Please, help me.”

 

            “He shouldn’t be here,” Tomoyo says, but everyone already knows that. Kendappa steps away, steps out of her way, and Tomoyo crosses the room, furious with her swollen face and the Russian’s weak smile. She points to Kurogane, asleep, the stump of his upper arm bound with blood-stained gauze. “What have you done to him?”

            “I did nothing,” the Russian replies. “I might ask your superior.”

            “You orchestrated the _bombing_.”

            “Tomoyo,” Kendappa interrupts, but Tomoyo decides to interrupt _her._

            “How’s this for your _book_?” Tomoyo snarls, gesturing to the man on the sofa. But she spreads out her arms, gesturing to everything around her. “Is there enough _conflict_ for you?”

            Kendappa does not reply.

            “ _What_ happened to him?” Tomoyo demands.

            “A fracture,” says a familiar voice, and Tomoyo whirls around, eyes landing on a tall woman in a dark robe. She knows this woman. Yuuko. Yuuko, whose death has not yet drifted through Tomoyo’s dreams. Yuuko—there is a history, of course, that Tomoyo doesn’t like to think about. “The bone broke through his skin.”

            “So you _cut it off_?!”

            “But of course!” Yuuko chuckles. “I am not a surgeon, and his fracture would require surgery. I consulted the internet, of course.”

            “Arm’s in the freezer,” Chii Ashura adds, deadpan and bored. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of an outdated television. Tomoyo glances at it, sees her name on the running ribbon at the bottom of the screen. She’s on the news. The _news._ Tomoyo’s eyes race back and forth, reading her sister’s name, her own name, Kurogane Suwa’s, and—

            She turns to the Russian.

            “Yuui.”

            He grins. “Tomoyo. It is so nice to meet you.”

            “No,” she replies. “No, it isn’t.” She pauses. “The bombing. I want an explanation.”

            Chii turns down the volume of the television and turns her head, interested. Yuui’s smile does not change, and Tomoyo’s cold glare does not, either. Souma, instead, intervenes: “A word, Tomoyo.”

            “My _sister_ is here, Souma! _My sister!_ I want an explanation. I don’t want a _word_! _Why_ is Kendappa here? Why is Kurogane? They shouldn’t be here. They shouldn’t. You cut his _arm_ off! I mean, what—”

            “I want privacy,” Souma insists.

            “If I leave for a second, you all might just cut his _other_ arm off, if _this_ is anything to go by!”

            “I do not intend to have this conversation in front of your sister, Tomoyo. A word,” Souma says, and she sounds so sure of herself while Tomoyo does not feel certain of much at all, so she agrees, though she walks backwards, eyes on the rest of them. Kurogane, sleeping with his head lolled back. Chii, lighting up another cigarette. Yuuko, chuckling to herself. Yuui, picking Kurogane’s head up and sliding his own sweatshirt under it as a pillow. Kendappa, not meeting her eyes.

            Tomoyo begrudgingly goes back towards the bathroom, where Souma stands resolute, one hand on her hip.

            “Souma, you need to tell me what the hell is going on,” Tomoyo whispers. Her face is sore. She’s taken out the rest of the glass herself, and her cheeks sting, full of tiny cuts.

            Souma sighs, looking up at the ceiling.

            “It was always going to happen,” Souma starts. “I always knew that.”

            “ _Tell me._ ”

            “Look—Kendappa is like me,” Souma explains, gesturing to herself. “She is someone else’s superior, but she is like me. Equals. You know how this works.”

            Tomoyo does. Amelia led her to this life, albeit accidentally, and Tomoyo has not known a life without treason for some time. Souma has been her superior for the past three years, delivering orders in Russian, exchanging information in coded emails, meeting Tomoyo in coffeehouses where smooth jazz colors the lulls in conversation—her superior. With the whole nature of the business, Tomoyo has only interacted with Souma throughout the years; it is necessary for the work. If she knows too many others, she becomes a liability, dangerous if caught. Tomoyo grimaces.

            “How couldn’t I know this?” she asks, but it is a question she asks herself. She knows she should have caught on, yet she never suspected her own sister of the same crime. “How couldn’t I?”

            “It’s not your fault,” Souma mutters. “Before this, with your estrangement, you could not have seen it.”

            Tomoyo swallows. “For how long?”

            “Longer than you.”

            “Before the estrangement?”

            Souma nods. Tomoyo hangs her head. She thinks that she ought to be more perceptive, all things considered, that she should have been suspicious before all of this—and she was, of course, but she was not suspicious of _this_ in particular. The sisters had separated, left on bad terms, until the internment camps; then, they were forced together, reforming a strange bond. It was going well, too. Kendappa almost said _I love you, too,_ once, and Tomoyo had been happy about it, even if the words never quite came out.

            Tomoyo collects herself, picks up her chin.

            “Yuui?”

            “He is like you,” Souma replies. “He has your position. Kendappa is _his_ superior.”

            Tomoyo considers this, staring at Souma. Another woman, unscathed. (A child, dead, who called her _mama_ —a camp on fire—a truck—her parents driving in the rain, and she always told them not to.)

            “Yuui didn’t orchestrate the bombing,” Tomoyo says slowly, because she knows he wouldn’t. He follows orders. He is just like Tomoyo. He doesn’t hatch plans; he carries them _out_. Souma nods, a bit solemn, watching the gears click in her underling’s head. “It wasn’t him.”

            “No. It wasn’t.”

            “My sister…”

            Souma sighs.

            “Kids died,” Tomoyo murmurs. “There were kids.”

            “It was not the intention,” Souma replies. “Casualties happen, Tomoyo. You know this.”

            Tomoyo looks away.

            “This is the life we have chosen,” Souma continues. “We don’t have any other options, now. They would have caught on to Yuui. They would have caught on to your sister. They had already caught on to _you_.”

            “But I didn’t know about the bombs,” Tomoyo says softly.

            “I’m sorry, Tomoyo.”

            “We’re wanted criminals, Souma.”

            “Looks like it.”

            “Kurogane shouldn’t be here,” Tomoyo whispers, and it’s an empty complaint. He _is_ here. He’s a part of the plot, now. She thinks of letters on his wall in a language he can’t read, a liar baking teacakes, Kendappa pulling Tomoyo out of a truck, a Japanese civilian turned traitor. Souma clasps Tomoyo’s shoulder, smiling grimly.

            “Well, he is,” Souma concludes.

            She’s right.

 

            (Amelia with a gun pointed at her face, and she won’t put up her hands.)

            Amelia with her phone pressed to her cheek. Amelia speaking Russian and assuming Tomoyo doesn’t know it, but Tomoyo does. She’s in a coffee house with Tomoyo on their first date and gets up, walking towards a window for her conversation, speaking in a low voice. Tomoyo knows every word she says, and she sips sweetened coffee at their table, listening.

            Amelia hangs up the phone.

            “I am sorry,” Amelia apologizes. “It was my mother.”

            It isn’t her mother. They both know it, but Tomoyo doesn’t correct her. She just smiles, nods. It is the first time Tomoyo hears the woman’s voice in her native tongue, and the first time she ever hears the name ‘Yuuko’. She will hear it later, of course, but Tomoyo’s dreams do not tell her everything. In fact, she considers, they only tell her things she doesn’t want to know.

            Amelia puts her phone back into her purse. Later, Tomoyo will reveal that she majored in Russian, and Amelia will go pale but will keep smiling—but for now, Amelia smiles, her lips filled in red, and Tomoyo has to look away to keep from blushing.

            (Amelia with a gun pointed at her face, and she won’t put up her hands.)

 

            Kendappa and Souma head out of the room for a little while to speak with Yuuko, leaving Tomoyo, Yuui, and Chii behind. Chii stays near the television, already bored with the news, switching through channels. Yuui sits by Kurogane, watching him sleep with a thoughtful look on his face. Tomoyo decides to take a seat across from the Russian, gathering herself. It is too late for her to blame him, now. She understands this. He glances at her for just a moment, but she isn’t looking back; she’s looking at Kurogane’s bound arm, the empty space where a forearm was. She reaches up and touches it lightly.

            “I do not think he will be happy when he comes to his senses,” Yuui confesses, his tone of the reaching sort—he is trying to make small talk, the sort that Tomoyo dismissed in the camp. She goes for _civil_ , here.

            “He hasn’t woke up?”

            “Oh, he did,” Yuui chuckles, “but he was not entirely here. He was being unusually pleasant.”

            “Yeah,” she says. “That _is_ unusual.”

            Yuui smiles at her. “Not to worry—he will be back to normal when the morphine wears off, yes?”

            “I feel sorry for him.”

            “Ah. I do, too.”

            They are quiet. Chii is turning up the television, muttering to herself that there are not enough channels on it, complaining that Yuuko is “cheap”. Tomoyo and the Russian ignore her.

            “The letters,” Tomoyo says, but it is something like a question. Yuui nods. Tomoyo thinks of papers stuck to a wall, of Kurogane observing them like a proud idiot, his chest puffed out while her heart hurt. “He never knew what they said, you know.”

            “But of course. I would not have written them, otherwise. I did not want him to think poorly of me.”

            “He probably will,” she reminds him, and Yuui’s smile turns sad.

            “I suppose I am not like you,” Yuui contemplates. “When I see misfortune ahead, I spread it. When you see it, you put up a gate around yourself and do not allow it to grow. I suppose it was selfish of me, but I liked him. I wanted some way to keep him with me. It was entirely selfish, wasn’t it? You are more principled.”

            She does not reply.

            “You must be surprised,” he decides. “I think I would be, in your position.”

            “It hasn’t been a good night. We can start with that,” she replies tightly. Kurogane’s face twitches in a dream, brow furrowed, but she thinks whatever his dreams are must be more pleasant than reality. She considers him, frowning. “He’s a good kid, you know.”

            “He is a violent man, rather,” Yuui corrects.

            “Grieving? Yeah. Reckless? Of course. But he’s a good kid.”

            “He is not a child.”

            Tomoyo gives him a hard look, then, but she knows he’s correct.

            “He told me that you see the future,” Yuui says. “I wonder if you predicted me.”

            “I did.”

            “What did you see?”

            Kurogane is mumbling in his sleep, sounding distressed, but he is not saying any clear words. Tomoyo tilts her head, trying to hear him better—but, still, it just comes out like nonsense. She pats the sleeping man’s knee.

            “My visions are all about death,” she says. “I don’t think you want to hear them.”

            “It is no wonder you didn’t care for me, then, no?” Yuui laughs.

            She offers a small, passionless laugh to join his, but it works well enough: Yuui looks satisfied. They both turn their heads to the man on the sofa, wondering about the civilian in their care. Tomoyo steals a small glance at the Russian. His hair is yellow as fire, yellow as death, yellow as a desert, yellow as a grave—

            He is going to kill Kurogane Suwa.

            Yuui catches her eyes, smiling amicably—

            She is going to stop him.

 

            Six months in, and Amelia is in Tomoyo’s apartment, looking too expensive to fit in it. Tomoyo is getting two beers from her refrigerator while Amelia studies the acrylic nails on her fingers, painted red as lust with small, pale rhinestones scattered. It looks beautiful in the apartment light. Amelia does, too, and Tomoyo joins her girlfriend on the sofa, handing her a bottle. Amelia smiles, accepts.

            “You are good to me,” Amelia murmurs.

            “Pretty girl in my apartment—how could I say no?” Tomoyo returns.

            Tomoyo kisses the woman’s cheek, which earns a bemused chuckle. Amelia twists open the cap and puts it on the table. It’s an odd thing, but Amelia has collected every bottle cap she’s ever used. It is a small but endearing thing. Aside from that, Amelia looks every bit regal and sophisticated. Tomoyo opens her bottle, getting a gulp. Amelia stares at her own bottle.

            “Something wrong?” Tomoyo asks.

            “I am simply thinking.”

            “Let’s hear it.”

            “Mortality,” Amelia says, dwelling on the word. She almost brings the bottle to her lips, but she stops short of it. “Tomoyo, I am going to die someday.”

            Tomoyo immediately downs half her bottle at that.

            Amelia in the bank, unperturbed and brave as the shot fires that will end her life. Amelia, who has not gone into a bank since she started dating Tomoyo, somehow always convinced not to go because of excuses Tomoyo makes. Tomoyo is looking at the woman beside her, frightened, because she knows how it will end.

            “We all do,” Tomoyo says, keeping her voice light. “That’s the deal, right?”

            Amelia takes a small sip. “It is not that.”

            “Then what?”

            “I have no recourse. Is it sad? I am sad for that,” Amelia decides.

            “I don’t get it.”

            “You do, and I know you do. You know what will happen to me—I can see it in your face,” Amelia accuses gently. “But I will be just like your parents. You will not stop it.”

            Tomoyo keeps drinking.

            “Of course,” Amelia muses, “it will not be an _accident_ , will it?”

 

            Kurogane wakes up, again, aware of a pain in his arm. Gone is the happy, tranquil feeling that made him soft and loving. Morphine is wearing off. He opens his eyes and sees Tomoyo asleep, her head on the sofa he’s on, and Fai going through—that’s his backpack, _his_ backpack, and Fai has the cigar box in his hand. Kurogane clears his throat, and Fai stops, suddenly.

            But he isn’t Fai, is he? Kurogane is no longer sure. When he looks to his left, he sees that half his arm is gone, and the Russian is looking at him, smiling with some unease, caught. Kurogane is distracted, of course, because _half his arm is gone._ He looks back at it. It doesn’t reappear. It’s all wrapped up, missing. A forearm, a wrist, a hand: gone. Missing. His heart speeds up. It must be a dream. If he goes back to sleep, he will wake up, and everything will make sense. He will have an arm. He blinks at it, but there is no change.

            “Ah!” the Russian hums. “How are we feeling, Kurogane?”

            Tomoyo opens an eye, squinting. Kurogane doesn’t answer. He _feels_ like his arm is still there in its entirety, full of screaming pain, but he can’t see it. This can’t be right. Just a moment ago, it was there. He was crawling and something hit him, but it was _there_.

            “Kurogane?” Fai asks.

            Kurogane touches the gauze, horrified that it’s real, that he can touch it. He jerks his hand back.

            “Holy shit. Holy shit,” he whispers.

            Someone is touching his knee. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t have an arm. It’s not there. It should be right there. He doesn’t know where he is, how he got here, how he lost it—he was in the camp and everything was on fire, and then nothing was.

            “I told you this was stupid,” a strange woman scolds. “You never listen, Yuui.”

            Kurogane lets out a weird sound that isn’t quite a word, but it must mean something, because Tomoyo peels her face off the sofa (she looks _awful_ ) and snaps, “Get Yuuko. He needs morphine.”

            Kurogane hears someone getting up and moving, but it doesn’t matter. His eyes are glued to the injury. It’s not there. It’s missing. Tomoyo’s tiny hands wave in front of his face. She’s talking. He isn’t listening. He keeps touching the space where he _feels_ his arm, but it isn’t there.

            “Kurogane, you’re still in Arizona. We survived the bombing. We’re in a safe place,” Tomoyo is telling him, but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t, because his body is all wrong. “Kurogane, _listen_ to me—are you listening?”

            “I have to wake up,” Kurogane realizes. He’s pinching himself, but he isn’t waking up. “Wake up. Wake up. C’mon.”

            “You aren’t dreaming. This is real.”

            “It’s not.”

            “You lost your arm, Kurogane. This is _real_.”

            “Arm’s in the fridge,” says a strange woman’s voice, but Kurogane ignores it.

            “Your arm is gone, okay?”

            “I can feel it. It has to be there,” Kurogane insists. Anything that hurts like this hasto be real. "Where is it?”

            Tomoyo sighs. More motion. Someone’s coming in. Someone grabs his other arm—Fai, Fai again, and pulls Kurogane’s sleeve up. Kurogane elbows the Russian as soon as he sees a syringe and Fai grabs at his arm, trying to keep it steady. Tomoyo is talking over it all, telling him _calm down_ , but how should he? Would Tomoyo be calm? Would anyone? Where are they? Where is this? What happened in the camp? Where is his _arm_?

            “This is only for the pain, I promise,” Fai insists.

            “No injections!”

            “You’ll feel better. You’ll feel sleepy and much better.”

            Kurogane feels the sharp, precise prick of the needle and faces an unfortunate, awful reality. He _is_ awake. This is real. Tomoyo’s face is swollen up and Fai looks dirty and this place is full of incense and his arm is gone and he isn’t dreaming. It wasn’t a dream. This place is real. He stays still, feeling a strange rush go up and down his right arm.

            The thing about trauma is that it can be so terrible, in the end, that no shouting, crying, or panicking can be the proper response. Instead, Kurogane finds himself feeling unusually calm. He turns his head, watching the needle in his intact arm, and stares at the Russian. The pain is sharpening and it’s in a place where no limb exists, but if he just looks at Fai, maybe—

            But he isn’t Fai—

            “Who are you?” Kurogane asks.

            The Russian quickly takes the needle from Kurogane’s arm and sets it aside, hesitating on a reply. But he finds one. He sits up, eyes bright, and smiles.

            “I told you the truth,” he says. “My name is Yuui Fluorite.”

            (A boy who saw a bird standing on one leg and wrote to Kurogane to say so, a boy who spelled _exciting_ as _exiting_ , a boy whose letters Kurogane had to keep hidden in a box full of memories—)

            “Yuui,” Kurogane repeats. _Sincerely, Yuui Ashura._ The Russian nods. _Sincerely, Yuui Ashura._  Fluorite?“What are you?”

            “A man.”

            “You know what I’m asking.”

            “I should hate to explain the obvious.” Kurogane glares. Fai— _Yuui_ throws up his hands, surrendering. “I thought you knew, by now: I am a Russian spy. I hoped to tell you another way, of course, but I suppose it can’t be helped.”

            All he sees is the yellow-haired man in the room with a smile that hurts for how much Kurogane loves seeing it. He shouldn’t love seeing it. A spy. A traitor. Treason. They are not in the camp.

            “What happened?” he asks.

            “Ah—yes, you lost your arm,” Yuui says hurriedly, apologetically. “It was a terrible fracture. We have no doctors, Kurogane—this was all we could do for you. I am sorry.”

            “Tell me what happened,” Kurogane commands.

            “You should heal well. It was much easier than we anticipated, and you did not bleed much—”

            “ _No_ ,” Kurogane scolds. “Tell me about the camp.”

 


End file.
